N1 Flight #1

The gigantic Soviet-made N1 rocket, Sergei Korolev’s answer to the American Saturn V launcher, lifts off for the first time with an unmanned Zond spacecraft intended for a lunar flyby. Barely 70 seconds after leaving the pad, the N1 explodes at an altitude of seven miles, but the Zond space probe is salvaged by its escape tower rockets. The Soviet Union is no closer to safely sending a crew of cosmonauts to the moon.